Afoot in England eBook

With this question, however, we need not concern ourselves.
To me, after stumbling by chance on the little church
in that solitary woodland place, the story of its
origin was accepted as true; no doubt it had come
down unaltered from generation to generation through
all those centuries, and it moved my pity yet was
a delight to hear, as great perhaps as it had been
to listen to the beautiful chimes many times multiplied
from the wooded hill. And if I have a purpose
in this book, which is without a purpose, a message
to deliver and a lesson to teach, it is only this—­the
charm of the unknown, and the infinitely greater pleasure
in discovering the interesting things for ourselves
than in informing ourselves of them by reading.
It is like the difference in flavour in wild fruits
and all wild meats found and gathered by our own hands
in wild places and that of the same prepared and put
on the table for us. The ever-varying aspects
of nature, of earth and sea and cloud, are a perpetual
joy to the artist, who waits and watches for their
appearance, who knows that sun and atmosphere have
for him revelations without end. They come and
go and mock his best efforts; he knows that his striving
is in vain—­that his weak hands and earthy
pigments cannot reproduce these effects or express
his feeling—­that, as Leighton said, “every
picture is a subject thrown away.” But
he has his joy none the less; it is in the pursuit
and in the dream of capturing something illusive,
mysterious, and inexpressibly beautiful.

Chapter Two: On Going Back

In looking over the preceding chapter it occurred
to me that I had omitted something, or rather that
it would have been well to drop a word of warning
to those who have the desire to revisit a place where
they have experienced a delightful surprise.
Alas! they cannot have that sensation a second time,
and on this account alone the mental image must always
be better than its reality. Let the image—­the
first sharp impression—­content us.
Many a beautiful picture is spoilt by the artist
who cannot be satisfied that he has made the best
of his subject, and retouching his canvas to bring
out some subtle charm which made the work a success
loses it altogether. So in going back, the result
of the inevitable disillusionment is that the early
mental picture loses something of its original freshness.
The very fact that the delightful place or scene
was discovered by us made it the shining place it
is in memory. And again, the charm we found
in it may have been in a measure due to the mood we
were in, or to the peculiar aspect in which it came
before us at the first, due to the season, to atmospheric
and sunlight effects, to some human interest, or to
a conjunction of several favourable circumstances;
we know we can never see it again in that aspect and
with that precise feeling.